


Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

by Lesbianna



Series: Kurtbastian First Kisses [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Closeted Kurt Hummel, Episode: s01e18 Laryngitis, Everyone Is Gay, Except Britt bc she's bi, F/F, Kurt Hummel has daddy issues, Kurt has an off-screen conversation with Finn about his crush and lets it go, Lord of the Ring quotes, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Maya is totally into Brittany, Mention of STDs, Mention of guys hitting on lesbians, Sebastian Smythe has even more daddy issues, Sebastian lived in France, Sebastian watches Gossip Girl, The Lima Bean, The OFC is of color but it's not really mentioned much, gay and lesbian solidarity, kind of, lesbians with pink hair, sebastian POV, you can headcanon Maya however the hell you want but she's awesome and i love her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 17:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13552422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesbianna/pseuds/Lesbianna
Summary: Being back in Ohio for the first time since he was fourteen sucks, Sebastian thinks. He has to deal with transferring to an entirely new school - Dalton Academy for Boys - in his sophomore year, deal with his best friend talking about cheerleaders constantly, and he might be a little jaded with life in general.This is the stage as it is set up.Then in comes another boy, holding the hands of a cheerleader, but wanting his turn at living authentically, who wants to be the one to take the bows.This is their story; a story of bucketfuls of coffee, quotes from Gossip Girl, snark, and a lesbian who lectures boys with daddy issues about STDs by reading Lord of the Rings to them.





	Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

Sebastian Smythe’s first impression of being back in the airport of Columbus, Ohio for the first time in two years had been that of a girl with bubblegum-pink hair running straight at him as soon as he had left the gate and attempting to either hug him or choke him, it was very up-in-the-air what exactly she was trying to do.

“ _Hola!_ Welcome home bitch!” she screamed into his ear, the scent of her shampoo – strawberry – overwhelming him.

He laughed, and pried her arms off him. “It’s  _bonjour_  Maya, not  _hola_ _!_ I’ve been in France, not Spain!”

Maya just rolled her eyes and huffed, “Sure, like  _you’d_  know,” then grabbing his arm and starting to drag him towards the baggage claim.

“I  _would_ , I’m the one who’s been living there!” he argued, tugging at her hair, falling back into the easy banter he always had had with Maya.

“I’m not sure you would know; the French boys are probably not all that different from the Spanish boys!” she snarked and twisted her head to stick her tongue out at him.

He shook his head with a laugh and followed her without speaking again.

She was his best friend, had been ever since they were toddlers; they’d grown up on the same street – this was back when Sebastian’s parents were still together and in love. Maya had taught him how to climb the highest tree on the street, and that had sort of been it for the both of them. Love at first sight, their parents had said jokingly, as they sat together on the Smythe’s porch and drank cups of coffee that was the same color as Maya’s soft skin.

Maya’s parents had sort hoped that they’d fall in love – because wouldn’t that be an adorable wedding speech? - but as it turned out, Maya was just as gay as he was. She told him she’d probably known subconsciously that he was like her, when she’d told him she could teach him how to climb trees that day. They had come out to their respective parents on the same night, when they were thirteen. Maya’s dad had allegedly sighed, taken off his glasses and started cleaning them, put them on again, and left the room, muttering about having to throw away that damn wedding speech for her and Sebastian. Her mother had held out hope for another three days, but upon hearing that Sebastian wasn’t interested in girls himself, she’d given up. Maya was still fuming that somehow Sebastian’s sexuality had been what had cemented it for her, and not her own utter disinterest in getting personal with penises.

Finally, they reached the correct baggage claim, by which his father stood waiting for his son’s luggage. His eyes tired and his peaks a little more noticeably silvery, his eyebrows streaked with silvery hairs now as well. Two years really shouldn’t have made him look so old. A year and a half, Sebastian supposed, but it didn’t really matter; the tall man looked older than he by any rights should. He’d got a pair of new glasses too, resting on the bridge of his hooked nose.

“Hi dad,” he said quietly. Aidan Smythe nodded wearily and opened his arms enough for Sebastian to give him an awkward sideways hug.

“How’s your mom?” his dad asked, his gaze still on the conveyer belt, waiting for the bags his son owned to arrive.

“She’s okay,” Sebastian replied tersely, his shoulders as square and tense as his father’s.

It was strange, but he was pretty sure his dad was still in love with his mom. Somewhat, anyway. Maybe it was just all the memories of a happy marriage and the way Sebastian had her eyes, maybe it was the knowledge that he had let his career destroy his relationship with his wife who’d finally decided to get out. She’d jumped on a plane and never come back to the States. Sebastian had been ten, and he’d wanted to stay in the U.S. Stay with Maya and stay with Jacob (his silly ten-year-old crush on a straight boy who couldn’t have cared less about him if he tried). But when he was fourteen, mom and dad had had a fight, and Aidan had finally let Sebastian go to France. He hadn’t wanted to return, and he hadn’t had to. Maya had visited him a couple times and he’d called his dad, but other than them, all ties with America had been cut.

“Her new boyfriend’s good to her?” his dad asked gruffly, and Sebastian just nodded.

That was why he’d had to return for his sophomore year of high school. His mom had found a new boy-toy, and she wanted to travel the world with him. Just the two of them. So, Sebastian had been sent back to the U.S, and he had to deal with his emotionally constipated father as a result.

Maya quite loudly exclaimed, “that’s the bag, isn’t it?” pointing at a lime green bag at the conveyer belt

They all knew it wasn’t, but at least it broke the awkward silence. A few moments later, the actual bag – army green - came, they grabbed it, and headed to the car. The awkward silence was crushing.

* * *

An hour later, Sebastian stood in his old room. The air was stale, like windows hadn’t been opened for a long time, and an old, dusty sock still lay on the floor.

“Why in the world did you let him go with you to pick me up?” Sebastian hissed into the phone. Maya huffed.  _“He’s your **dad**. He’s missed you, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.”_

“He misses mom!” he corrected her, and he could almost hear her roll her eyes.

_“He missed you as well.”_

“He told me that my joke about how he needs a maid to clean the living room – which, by the way, has no one taught him how to use a vacuum cleaner in that specific room? It’s disgusting – anyway, he told me my joke reminded him of mom.  _It’s been six years_. He’s being pathetic.”

Maya sighed, and her voice crackled on the line. Sebastian spun on the spot, deciding that sitting on the bed wasn’t something he’d do until he’d changed the sheets. Having seen the dusty floor under the couch in the living room, he didn’t know if he trusted his sheets to not have some disease.

_“Is he being a dick?”_

“Not really. I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t wait to start school. It’s gonna be good to get out of this house. It smells like public school here.”

_“Oh, fuck off Sebastian, you **know**  I’ll still be going to public school. I still don’t understand why my parents couldn’t send me to Crawford, Carmel just doesn’t even make sense. They sing, constantly. It’s horrifying. Anyway, what else is up with being home?”_

“My room’s all… Musty. He hasn’t been here for years, I think. It’s just like when he moved to a new house when we were ten. Away from everything that leaves him. Like that helps when he’s got a kid to remind him of her. And that poster of a shirtless Channing Tatum is still hanging in my closet. That heart you dared me to draw around his crotch when we were twelve is also still there, by the way,” He stared at the open closet door. Channing stared seductively back, a lopsided heart made with bright red sharpie shining back at him.

Maya laughed.  _“Oh god, I remember that! We were playing truth or dare! Silly how that was the wildest dare I could come up with, wasn’t it?”_

Sebastian hummed for a moment, and they fell quiet.

_“Do you want me to come by and help you unpack? I can jump on my bike and be there in fifteen minutes.”_

“It seems kind of silly that dad gave you a lift home, if you’re just going to come here,” Sebastian told her. He knew she’d wanted to leave the car, get away from the awkwardness that was Sebastian and his dad, but he couldn’t help wanting to get a dig in.

“ _It’s sillier that we’re talking on the phone, when we could be saving money by talking face to face,”_ Maya told him, and disconnected.

Fifteen minutes later, she’d arrived, pink-cheeked and pink-haired and helped him unpack.

“It’s not that long until school starts,” she told him. “Then it’s back to algebra and Shakespeare, and I can stream Sue Sylvester’s Most Epic Burns on my phone in the breaks again while you choke on your stupid private school tie.”

Sebastian sighed, ignoring her diss of school ties. “Algebra’s better than my dad right now. I wish he’d just stop trying to tell me how like my mom I am. It’s very  _Harry Potter.”_

* * *

 

Dalton was big and pretentious, and Sebastian  _loved it._  There was a hallway with five chandeliers, and marble stair-cases and paintings of oceans and big windows overlooking endless planes of green grass and majestic buildings. The uniforms were even comfortable. He looked like the average rich teenage boy here, and all rich teenage boys at boarding school have their own tragic, pathetic backstories, of parents who has left them, of siblings dying, of old money being passed down, of insurmountable expectations. The boys are cold and rough, softened up by their uniforms that lets them know they’re surrounded by other souls like them, they’re sharp edges and they’re all used to five chandeliers and expensive paintings.

Dalton was beautiful, but it was also broken. Trent was a polite boy, succeeding in every class, who was abused by his uncle and his mother blamed _him_  for it, Wes’ parents didn’t love him enough to have him live at home, Flint was caught with a girl in his room and sent away.

They were all happy, most of the time, Sebastian supposed. They were kind, and they cared, and they weren’t not delinquents or anything. If anything, they were more like broken pieces of glass, reassembling themselves, without their parents help.

Perhaps that’s what he liked the most. How so many of them were sent there because they weren’t enough, in some way. Andrew from Calculus seemed to be here for the zero-tolerance-bullying policy; his skittery eyes and shaky legs, his jump of fear any time a loud sound echoed through the halls.

It was probably fucked up, to enjoy the way almost everyone had  _something_  wrong with them here, but he couldn’t help it. He loved the ostentatious beauty and the jagged pieces of golden heart.

The dorm rooms were not very big, but the beds were almost as soft as his bed at home, and his roommate – Nick Duval – was kind.

Sebastian heard of the Warblers on his second day. Of course he heard of them. The Warblers were the top of the hierarchy here at Dalton; they were the ones who decides who was popular and who wasn’t. It seemed kind of ridiculous just  _how_  popular they were – more, even, than the lacrosse players. Sebastian could sing, and he was decent at lacrosse. He’d be okay, even if one of the teams didn’t want him. He’d prefer the Warblers – mostly for the security a spot in the choir offered him.  It also made him  _interesting_ ; the kid who had transferred in from Paris, the kid who had sung his way into the Warblers, the talented, talented kid.

The Warblers were very… particular. A lot of people auditioned, yet never was allowed in. If your audition was ridiculed by the Council, you could hit the bottom of the hierarchy; it was something that could make or break your high school years. (Hey, Sebastian never pretended Dalton was some revolutionary school! Teenagers were horrible, no matter what kind of school they were attending.)

It was all about sucking up to the council, essentially.

Sebastian looked up videos from the last few years of the Warblers; they hadn’t competed for a few years, but there were still loads of private concert videos with them. Sebastian had used their dance steps, chosen a generic song from the Top 40’es and had gotten in with ringing applause. A boy named Blaine Anderson seemed to be springing for the role of lead soloist. Sebastian decided to watch and figure out what the dynamics were within the group; no use trying to be the lead soloist when they didn’t even go to competitions. Anderson could have his silly triumph.

* * *

 

A month into his first semester, he texted Maya a picture of his schedule, asking where it aligned up with hers.

 **Sebastian: Should we go back to tradition?**  He added, fiddling with his phone. He was standing by his desk in his dorm room, tie slung around his neck but not tied yet, and a yoghurt cup he’d snagged from the cafeteria in the morning on his desk. He had discovered, that if he avoided the crowded lunch on Thursdays and instead ate in his room, he had enough time to finish whatever homework he had in Physics.

**Maya: As long as we don’t go to the Post Office, I’m down for it!**

When they were younger, they used to have at least one afternoon a week where they met up, sometimes they’d use their pocket money on Chipotle or go see the old lady who volunteered at the Post Office, who always told them about the battles her late husband had been in – he’d been a soldier in World War II – and gave them candies or baked goods she’d brought from home. She’d died a few weeks before Sebastian went to Paris.

He and Maya had gone to her funeral, and Maya had cried into his shirt when she realized that neither of them had known that kind, old Mrs. Peters first name was Irma, and that they’d never go see her again on a sunny afternoon.

After that, they had stopped going on their weekly afternoon meetings.

Obviously, they still saw each other as much as possible before he left for France, but they didn’t have those scheduled meetings for over two years. Their Skype sessions had also been sporadic; sometimes they’d Skype every night, and then a month would pass, and Maya would call him yelling that she needed to come visit him less she’d go crazy in Ohio, or he’d call her, drunk out of his mind in a seedy gay bar and ask her to come pick him up.

Point was, they hadn’t had their tradition of a planned weekly meeting for a long time. They decided that the Lima Bean was neutral ground – they could both easily get there from their respective schools, and that Wednesdays worked the best.

And so, he arrived at the Lima Bean the following Wednesday, Maya sitting on a chair in a corner with a cup of tea and a book, her skin as cappuccino-like as always, and her hair in a bun.

”Hey friend, had any lesbianings recently?” he asked with a grin, as he slid into his seat across from Maya without any preamble.

She shook her head morosely, curls bouncing merrily, as she closed her book. “Unless you count watching The L Word for the fifth time as a ‘lesbianing’.”

He glanced down at the title.  _I Am Not a Serial Killer_. How reassuring. “I hear straight girls are totally into making out with each other, why don’t you just do that? Go to a party or something.”

Maya sighed. “Ugh,  _no_. I just want to do my lesbian thing with another lesbian. Or a bisexual. I’m not that picky.”

“You, not picky? You called me last year and cried for 45 minutes when you found out your family wasn’t going to send you to an all-girls boarding school.”

“Well, since our families have been friends since we were in diapers, I figured my family might pick up on your family’s wisdom in sending you to an all-boys school.”

“45 minutes Maya. Just because you wouldn’t get to be around cute girls at all times of the day.”

“Well, I’m just saying, it’d decrease my stress levels a lot if I could get to see only girls, and not have to deal with the stupidity of straight guys. And I  _know_  my family can afford it, the Crawford School for Girls isn’t that expensive... It’s even your sister school, so I’d get to be around you more often, so I can make sure you’re behaving,” she added with a snarky grin, and continued, “but they have this idea that they would be  _abandoning_  me if they did that. That it would make me think they want to get rid of me. So they shipped me off to  _Carmel_. The most popular people at Carmel are in Vocal Adrenaline, and if you can’t sing or dance at all, you’re fucked!”

Sebastian laughed. “Sucks to be you, my tone-deaf friend with the dancing capabilities of a shrimp.”

Maya scowled. “Shut up, just because you fit right in at Dalton Academy for preppy rich douche-bags, with their singing choir of preppy little birds that don’t even go to competitions and somehow still succeeds in being the most popular group in the school.”

Sebastian spread his arms wide. “You know me. I’m relishing being a  _rock star_.” Maya pretended to swoon before she told him to buy her some coffee.

“Only because I’m such a gentleman. A gentleman  _and_  a rock star.” He told her.

The barista at the counter was a girl – she was probably around fifteen – and she became adorably flustered when he smiled at her. She gave him a free muffin and a shy smile. Huh. “Thank you, sweetheart.” He told her, and she blushed all the way up to her blonde hair.

He returned to Maya and handed her the muffin as he told her what had happened. Maya groaned. “Of  _course,_  you get free muffins from flirting with the barista. If I smile at a male barista, he offers me his dick.” Sebastian laughed and tugged at her hair. “The solution is to not smile at all, I guess?”

She grimaced and took a bite of her muffin. “Thanks for the muffin though.”

* * *

 

They continued their Wednesday meetings over the next weeks, getting a cup of coffee or tea, and discussing important issues such as whether Kristen Stewart was a lesbian or if she was  _actually_  dating Robert Pattinson.

“I don’t believe it for a second!” Maya said, eating her sandwich. “It’s too big a coincidence that Robert and Kristen only started dating after Twilight gained success. Not during filming, not before the movie came out, no, only when the movie became successful.”

“They look like they enjoy each other’s company, though,” he argued.

Maya shot a degrading glare at him, and said with disgust, “Oh don’t tell me you ship  _Robsten._ ”

Sebastian put his hands in the air. “If  _I_  can’t get Robert, at least let him date Kristen Stewart.”

* * *

His birthday passed without much fanfare. His dad didn’t call, didn’t even  _text_. Maya sent him a picture of her in a party hat and baked a cake for him which she gave him on their next Wednesday meeting. She also gave him a sequined shirt as a gag gift. She’d snickered evilly as he shot her a disgusted glare.

She finally gave him his actual gift – Twilight and New Moon DVD’s.

“At least you’re not someone who pretends he watches it for the  _plot_.” She grimaced.

His mom’s present reached him after a couple weeks – some new shoes, a couple books, and exotic candy. Somehow that was worse than her not remembering at all.

* * *

 

Sometimes, he and Maya did their homework together – Maya was good at bothering him until he finished the bigger assignments – and sometimes she’d play particularly good videos she’d found online.

“I don’t ever want to be near the woman, but you gotta respect Sue Sylvester.” She said, looking at the video at the feared cheer coach telling a guy,  _“Hey buddy, I thought I smelled failure.”_

The video ended.

“She’s said that the homeless should ‘try not being homeless’ Maya. The woman is  _insane._ ” Sebastian said, leaning back in his seat, checking out a male barista’s ass. Such a shame that he was dating a girl – Sebastian had seen him kissing a brunette girl in a checkered dress last week.

“Yeah, but she’s still brought her team to the National for five years in a row!” she argued. Sebastian made sure she saw him rolling his eyes. She narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t say anything. They were silent for a few minutes, sipping their tea, Maya tapping on her phone.

 “Oh my god, that’s Brittany Pierce,” Maya suddenly whispered hotly, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“What?” Sebastian asked, tearing his eyes away from the  _very_ pretty barista, whose biceps were bulging as he carried a bag of coffee beans.

“ _Brittany S. Pierce!_ She’s a Cheerio at McKinley High -”

“oh, I already know where this is going,” he groaned. Sebastian didn’t know  _how_  many skype sessions he’d sat through, listening to Maya discuss the cheerleading team at McKinley; beyond her obsession with Sue Sylvester (what kind of weirdo had an idol they wanted to NEVER meet?) - for some reason she had a fixation on a girl named Santana. She’d gone to a cheerleading competition last year ( _even though Maya wasn’t even a cheerleader_ ) and Santana had said hi to her, and he’d had to endure a myriad of text messages on how  _she smiled when I told her good luck_  and how  _her high kicks were amazing!_

“…and she’s  _so_ beautiful! She’s a bit of an airhead, but as I understand it, she’s actually smarter than you would think!”

“It sounds like she’s rivaling your love for that Lopez chick…”

“Well, no, not exactly. But it’s a well-known secret that Santana Lopez and Brittany Pierce have sex on the regular. And as much as I wish Santana Lopez would fall in mad love with me, I know she and Brittany are going to end up together.”

“I still think you’re crazy,” Sebastian smirked. “Haven’t we talked about how straight girls like having sex with women before?”  
Maya rolled her eyes and snorted. “If Santana Lopez is heterosexual, I don’t know what the universe is coming to. And if she isn’t in love with Brittany, I’ll eat my socks. Mark my words, someday Santana Lopez will come out, and I won’t be surprised at all. Besides, what woman could be heterosexual when Brittany’s around? She’s amazing.” She continued to look at the blonde cheerleader buying two cups of coffee (one for her and one for ‘Lord Tubbington’ apparently.) Maya’s face was soppy and dreamy.

“You’re hoping for a lesbianing with that one, aren’t you?” he said – though it was phrased as a question, it wasn’t really one. Maya rolled her eyes.

They were quiet for a while. “Christmas holiday begins this Friday for you, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “You’ll call me for Christmas, won’t you?”

He nodded again.

* * *

 

He didn’t call her.

* * *

 

When he met her for coffee on Wednesday – he’d wanted to just not show up, but, well, it was  _Wednesday,_ and he couldn’t just ditch her - she pointed him to his seat, brought out a copy of The Lord of the Rings, and prepared herself to read to him by clearing her throat delicately, her hair wild and pink, her index finger moving along the lines of the part she wanted to read to him.

_“All that is gold does not glitter,_

_Not all those who wander are lost;_

_The old that is strong does not wither,_

_Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”_

He watched her carefully, her mascara-coated lashes hanging low over her eyes, and her dark brown eyes moving across the page.

_“From the ashes, a fire shall be woken,_

_A light from the shadows shall spring;_

_Renewed shall be blade that was broken,_

_The crownless again shall be king”_

“Who knew that the Lord of the Rings was so poetic?” he asked, trying to make a joke. She sent him a withering glare, and he fell silent.

“You have to stop this fucked up search of daddy’s approval you’ve got going.” She told him bluntly. “Just because you dad doesn’t understand why you don’t glitter, doesn’t mean you’re not still gold.”

He looked at her, lips pressed together. She pushed a plate with a couple cookies over to him and continued. “You know I don’t care how much sex you have, but having sex with a stranger in your room, while your dad is also home, trying to provoke him, that’s just fucked up. And at Christmas, no less. Fuck’s sake.”

“How’d you know about that?” he asked, cringing to himself.

“My mom’s friends with your neighbors, they saw your dad sending out a boy with messed up hair, clothes and love bites. It wasn’t hard to conclude what was happening. I figured that was also why you didn’t call me.”

True. That had been why.

Because he knew Maya would see through his bullshitting façade of “needing some ass” – because if he’d just wanted to fuck, he’d have done it in Scandals where he’d picked up the boy to begin with. Instead he’d brought the boy home, had made sure the door to his room was a little open, so the sound would reach his dad. He’d have done none of that if he’d wanted some ass.

It had been good, of course. Sex always was. But it hadn’t been about the sex, not in itself. It had been about bringing a boy home and fucking him into the mattress with his father in the house. It had been about getting  _something_  from his father that wasn’t comparisons to his mother, or deafening silence. How fucked up was that? Maya was right.

Worse was, that while his father had been angry and yelled at him for having sex in his house, his rant had ended with his disappointed eyes and the words, “your mother wasn’t this selfish,”

Sebastian had felt like screaming at his father that his mother was the fucking definition of selfish. She’d planned an entire trip around the world and hadn’t even thought of what to do with her only son until a few days before she was leaving. She wasn’t an angel.

He took a bite of the chocolate cookie.   
“And I bet you didn’t even use a condom, did you?” Maya sighed, irritated.

He shook his head. Somewhere, in his drunken brain, he’d decided that foregoing the condom was a smart idea, something about his dad’s reaction being stronger if he hadn’t used protection. Stupid. Maya nodded, looking disappointed. “We’ll go to Planned Parenthood as soon as you’re finished with your idiotic cookies. I’m not watching my best friend getting an STD for Christmas, just because he’s got daddy issues.”

He looked at her and smiled weakly.

“Dad remembered mom’s birthday on the 22nd. He reminded me to call her over dinner. He didn’t call  _me_. It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

She smiled back knowingly. “Daddy issues.”

* * *

 

He’d never not used a condom, and he’d also always insisted the guy wore a condom. At least when they were doing anal, which was what counted, right? Blowjobs didn’t give you STDs, did they?

Well, according to the lady who had taken some blood and urine samples and asked a million invasive questions, it  _did_ count. Even when doing oral. She told him he could be carrying something, and he wouldn’t even know, because sometimes there were no symptoms, and he’d be passing it on to someone else.

“Try flavored condoms,” she’d told him with a calm voice. Sebastian was sure she died a little bit inside every time she had to talk to a teenager about flavored condoms.

Maya asked if they had any dental dams and looked like a kid in a candy store when the lady brought out a handful of them.

He’d get his results back in a few months and was told to make regular appointments to get tested. He’d be fine, he told himself. Just  _fine._

* * *

 

New Year’s Eve with his dad was… awkward. It probably would have been anyway, even if he hadn’t brought a boy home on Christmas Eve and let his dad stumble in on them butt naked, Sebastian on his knees for him.

Sebastian wondered how big the difference was, as he sat on a leather couch wearing his new clothes – all morbidly expensive, even the cufflinks on his shirt cost more than most people’s monthly salary – surrounded by politicians raising their glasses full of champagne. He hadn’t been allowed any alcohol – “the boy is only sixteen, after all!” the greying Senator had chuckled at his dad as he steered Sebastian away from the wine.

Instead he was forced to sit with a cup of water, because since there were no other kids present, they didn’t even have soda.

The clock ticked closer to midnight, as he watched the television. When would they stop fooling themselves that they were in New York watching the ball drop? This was Ohio.

When he was 12, he and Maya had read about the tradition of New Years’ kisses. It was said that the thing you did when the clock struck midnight and you entered the new year, would be what you did for the rest of the year. Maya had told him, in a low, solemn whisper, that she wanted to kiss Isabella Duncan on the mouth at midnight, so she could keep kissing her for  _a whole_   _year._

He wondered what it meant if you felt lonely at midnight, as the bells rang, and the ball dropped.

He snuck out around one o’clock without any of the rich white men noticing, took a bus to Scandals, and kissed a boy for hours, just to prove to himself that he wasn’t lonely.

That whole New Year’s kiss thing was ridiculous anyway.

Maya may have kissed Isabella Duncan on the mouth, but Isabella Duncan had also turned out to be an asshole who had crushed Maya’s naïve twelve-year-old heart completely the next day. Both a racist  _and_ a homophobe, apparently.

It was stupid, and ridiculous, and he didn’t  _care._

(Maybe a little. Only a little though, he told himself, as he let himself sink into his own bed at four AM, and sleep overtake him.)

When he woke up again, the house was quiet. Snow was falling outside, and the windows were covered by a thin layer of frost. Ohio was colder than he remembered.

Sebastian tip-toed downstairs, turning on the coffee machine.

His hooked nose seemed to almost dip into the warm drink as he took in the scent. “Oh, I love you son,” he said gratefully. Sebastian felt his spine shiver and straighten, and his heart clench fiercely for a moment.

“You too dad,” he muttered.

Aidan Smythe took a sip of coffee and read the morning paper in silence. Sebastian let himself smile, as he grabbed a piece of toast.

The house suddenly felt a lot warmer.

* * *

The year of 2010 brought with it an increased workload at school, and Blaine Anderson trying to convince the Warbler Council to enter competitions next year, instead of only holding a few concerts a year and pairing up with the Crawford girls.

Because of the awkward Christmas he’d had, he had forgotten to even show up for the winter concert, but he didn’t have a solo or any vital part in it anyway, so why should he have even bothered anyway? He was unmissable at the impromptu performances, and he knew many of the freshmen  _adored_  him. (He was pretty sure he’d sucked off one or two of them at Scandals a few months ago. Whatever.)

He could deal with not singing with a choir of girls.

Nonetheless Sebastian was  _very_  happy whenever Maya could bring him out of his broody moods, as she did one day in early February:

“Oh no,” she said, sounding sad, as she looked at the door. Sebastian looked up and recognized the skirt and the short-sleeved shirt. A cheerio. Brittany S. Pierce. (He remembered, because the name sounded like Britney Spears.)

And she was holding the hands of a boy.

“Oh  _god_ , I don’t need this!” Maya mumbled. “Why does she have to come here with a boyfriend? Why can’t she come  _alone_ , so I can fantasize about having an illicit affair with her?”

Brittany and the boy sat down in a loveseat, the girl leaning in to kiss him.

“ugh!” Maya groaned, sounding like she wanted to die. “Why does she have to have a boyfriend?” Her eyes weren’t moving from Brittany Pierce’s blonde hair.

“Well, I don’t know about  _her_  sexuality, but that’s not a straight boy,” Sebastian stated, examining the skinny boy. He was putting up an alright front – not terribly amazing; he looked too uncomfortable in his flannel shirt – which swamped him completely, it was so big -, and his face when the girl had been about to kiss him had been slightly panicked. When Brittany had slipped off to get her coffee, his eyes had slid towards the counter, and – yup, not a straight guy.

Maya dragged her eyes away from Brittany Pierce. “How do you know?”

“Well, for one, he just checked out the very  _male_ barista.” Sebastian deadpanned. He couldn’t really blame the guy – it was the astonishingly pretty, but all too straight barista.

Maya laughed a little. “Okay.”

And then she stood up and  _walked over towards them_. Sebastian quickly slid out of his seat and followed her quickly, because Maya was stupid, but she was also his best friend.

Maya pretended to be walking past the cheerleader and the closeted boy, only turn to Sebastian and theatrically exclaim – “say, Sebastian – wasn’t that a  _Cheerio_?”

Her acting really was  _terrible._ “Oh, yes,” he responded airily.

Brittany had jumped in her seat and called out to Maya – “That was me, right?”

Maya smiled brightly at her. “Oh, yes! You’re Brittany Pierce, right? You were on top of the Cheerio’s pyramid during the Nationals last year, weren’t you?”

“Yeah! I was!” Brittany lit up and flipped her hair in the stereotypical bitchy cheerleader fashion. The smile on her lips was too genuine for that though.

“Can we sit down? I’m a huge fan of the Cheerios!”  
“Yes, of course!” Brittany was grinning and shaking her hand and – whoa, Sebastian was pretty sure she was flirting  _back._

He flopped down next to the boy and smirked.

“You don’t go to McKinley, do you?” the boy asked suspiciously, scowling at him. His voice sounded strange, uncomfortable, like he had to lower his voice somehow.

Maya was looking at Brittany in genuine interest – how she could even understand a word of what the girl was saying was beyond him, so Sebastian decided it was upon him to explain to the boy.

“No, I go to the all-boys-school in Westerville, Dalton Academy, and Maya goes to Carmel.”

“She’s not in the Glee Club, is she?” he asked harshly.

“No, Maya can’t sing at all. I’m at the Glee club at Dalton though, but we don’t go to competitions.” Sebastian rolled his eyes at the end of his remark.

The boy’s shoulders relaxed minutely. “I’m Kurt.” He said shortly.

“Sebastian Smythe.”

They shook hands.  _Huh_.  _Those are some soft hands he’s got there_.

“So, you two dating?” Kurt asked, attempting more friendly conversation, his eyes flickering back and forth between him and Maya.

Sebastian couldn’t help but laugh, and maybe his laugh was a  _little_  derisive; it was just so ridiculous to imagine dating  _Maya_. “She’s not exactly my type, nor am I hers.”

“What  _is_  your type then?” Kurt asked, seemingly without really thinking, his mouth snapping shut with a  _clack_.

He nodded his head towards the male barista and clicked his tongue.  
Kurt glanced towards the guy, licked his lips nervously, and turned his gaze back to Sebastian, who nodded towards Maya and Brittany.

“And Maya’s got a thing for cheerleaders.” He told Kurt, who nodded shakily, and they both started listening in to Brittany and Maya talking,

He could tell Maya wanted to ask, and, okay, he wasn’t about to deny his best friend the chance to figure out how long her silly crush had been dating a specific boy.

“Anyway Brittany, how long have you and Kurt been dating?”

“Oh, not long…“ Kurt started, apparently not wanting the girl to explain.

“Kurt used to be Capital G Gay, but then he stopped wearing his girly clothes so now he’s not, and he sang this really hot song in Glee club yesterday…“- Brittany interrupted Kurt, explaining airily. Sebastian felt his eyebrows shoot up, and he appraised the boy for a second. Huh. The boy wasn’t exactly closeted. He’d apparently been  _obvious_ enough to warrant the Capital G Gay label. He’d clearly attempted to crawl back into his closet. Shame.

Kurt touched Brittany’s arm, and said, “could you tell me what exactly Coach Sylvester was planning for our routine?”

Brittany grinned and started talking about high kicks and Cupies and about how they needed to nail down the high V for everyone – terribly confusing talk.

It wasn’t until Brittany accidentally tipped over her cup of what seemed to be hot chocolate and hit Kurt’s shirt that anything exciting happened. Well, the exciting part was what happened  _after_ that. Kurt hissed with pain as the heat of it burned his chest and Brittany babbled, giving him tissues to dry off with and talking about unicorns.

“You’re a sweetheart,” Kurt told Brittany in that strange, lowered voice. “Thanks for the tissues. But I better clean up in  _les toilettes_.” He smiled at her, and got up, waving off her concern to go to the bathroom.

Sebastian considered what to do for a moment, but – oh well, Maya and Brittany were talking again and he kind of wanted to get away from Maya’s mooning eyes ( _that’s the issue about being a girl who likes girls_ , she’d told him once.  _Everything happens so fast, and we’re riding on a fucking roller coaster of unbelievable highs and lows until we somehow learn to be somewhat healthy about it_ ) and Kurt at least provided some entertainment.

He got up and went into the men’s toilets after Kurt.

Kurt had taken off his buttoned-up flannel shirt and was washing it with the utmost expertise, his chest covered by a tank-top, clearly designer, Sebastian could recognize the expensive fabric as one his mother favored. He looked lean, and soft.

And also, incredibly stupid, still wearing his baseball cap.

Kurt had noticed him, he was pretty sure, but ignored him, instead choosing to use the machine blowing hot air at wet hands to dry off the wet, but clean flannel.

Sebastian stepped closer and caught Kurt’s eyes in the mirror. The boy turned to look at him, repressed excitement clear in his eyes.

“You do know your lowered voice isn’t fooling anyone, right?” he smirked. “We know you’re queerer than a three-dollar bill.”

Kurt’s face twisted, as though remembering something sad, and then, recollecting himself said, “How would you even know it  _if_  I was gay?”

Sebastian was stepping closer all the while, as he shrugged and said, “Straight guys don’t check out other boys just after kissing their girlfriends. I mean, the barista is damn fine, but he’s like, practically married to his perfectly heterosexual girlfriend. It’s such a shame.”

Kurt Hummel’s eyes were very large, as he took in the idea that someone had realized he was gay because he’d looked differently at a boy rather than because of what he’d worn.

Sebastian huffed.

“I don’t know who you think you’re going to fool, Kurt Hummel. You can wear your too-big flannel shirts and baseball caps and kiss your ‘girlfriend’, but nothing can erase your gay face or your high voice.” He stepped forwards, almost pressing Kurt into the wall, but not quite touching him. Not trapping him either; Kurt was staying because he wanted to. The heat was almost tangible, like small threads of fire between them. “Nothing can change how you want boys, nothing can change how kissing Brittany will never do anything for you, not like boys will. Never.”

Kurt’s breathing was hard and fast, his breath, smelling like mocha, hit Sebastian’s face, his cheeks flushed, eyes foggy with what Sebastian recognized as lust, as he let his breath out slowly, hitting Kurt’s throat and making him goose bump. He grinned and stepped a small step back. Kurt seemed to regain his senses, blinking a few times.

“I  _can_  change. And I  _will_.” Kurt said, and his voice held a shaky promise that would definitely be broken, a defiant look in his eyes. Sebastian shook his head and laughed. “Good luck with that, Hummel.” And he grabbed his shirt and left.

The boy didn’t seem to have realized that he’d spoken in a much higher pitched voice. His real voice.

Sebastian washed his hands before he walked back out.

* * *

 

 It seemed that as soon as he’d left the bathroom, Kurt had decided to abandon all pretense of being heterosexual when talking to Maya. He still put the ridiculous flannel back on, and his voice was still lowered – as though under the belief that if he practiced  _looking_  like a heterosexual male, he’d pass as one – but he was telling Maya eagerly about how he’d made the position of kicker on the football team.

And if anyone watching genuinely believed the boy was straight, they certainly would not after learning that he had danced the Single Ladies’ dance as a warm-up routine before even attempting to kick the ball.

Maya was smiling widely. “That sounds fabulous Kurt,”

Kurt grinned back at her. “I got them all to do it too. They danced to Single Ladies on the field. That dance and their unexpectedly talented kicker won them the game.”

They all laughed loudly, and Brittany looked at him with big doe eyes and kissed him on the mouth. The kiss seemed more comfortable now, but he still didn’t look…  _comfortable_. Sebastian raised his eyebrows at Kurt, as though to say, ‘I told you so’.

“Go get some more hot chocolate for Britt, would you Seb?” Maya asked him loudly, and Brittany professed her desire to come with, telling him that she’d like to see how the machine for making hot chocolate was worked, since she’d ‘accidentally read the manual of instructions a couple months ago’. She regaled him with explanations about how each tap worked, and amazingly, was right on every single one.

Maybe Brittany wasn’t all that stupid.

As Sebastian and Maya were about to get ready to leave twenty minutes later, Brittany asked “Wait, guys, we’re friends now, aren’t we?” in an adorably lovable fashion, cocking her head, like a puppy asking to be loved.

Maya eagerly almost yelled, “yeah, we’re friends!”  
“So now we all got to be friends on Facebook too, otherwise it’s not real!”

She pulled out her laptop, made sure everyone got a friend request from everyone and that everyone accepted said friend request

Later that night, Maya texted him about Kurt.

 **Maya**   _: I asked Kurt what was up with the whole playing-straight thing when you and Britt bought more drinks._

 **Maya**   _: His dad got a new girlfriend, and said girlfriend has a son our age._

 **Maya**   _: And the son is interested in basically all the things his dad loves but Kurt just can’t see the point of._

 **Maya** : _He feels like he can’t measure up to the perfect son his dad now has._

 **Maya**   _: So, I hope for your sake you didn’t say anything mean to him in the bathroom to make him feel worse!_

Sebastian could kind of relate. Not with the whole step-brother-thing, but with the not-measuring-up-thing. That sucked.

 **Sebastian** :  _That sucks._

Then he snuck out to Scandals and sucked something else, before returning to the cracked people at Dalton, wondering what measure they had tried and failed to live up to.

* * *

Maya was sick. She’d only managed to call and tell him this when he was already over half-way to the Lima Bean, and though he was tempted to shout at her for this, he  _hadn’t_. Good deed of the day.

But, honestly, he was almost at the Lima Bean anyway, and he could either go back to Dalton like a mediocre person with no life, or he could get a cup of coffee and go back to Dalton afterwards. It was Wednesday, and he’d been conditioned to get coffee from the Lima Bean every Wednesday. The choice was obvious.

So, it was a logical decision. It just didn’t explain why he sat down next to Kurt Hummel once he’d gotten inside.

“You're like a car accident, ‘cause I just can't look away.” He greeted Kurt as he slid into his seat, coffee cup in hand.

 “You know, you really gotta be supportive of bacteria.” Kurt said with a sarcastic grin. “They’re the only culture  _some people_  have.”

Sebastian  _oohed_  loudly, and after a sip of coffee, said, “I gotta tell you, honey, no matter how cultured and informed I get, there's only one problem with your face. It’s that I can see it.”

“I'd like to see things from your point of view, but I can't seem to get my head that far up my ass.” Kurt told him pityingly, a smile dancing on his lips. “Now,  _honey,_ I don't engage in mental combat with the unarmed, so run off.” Kurt finished speaking, and took a satisfied sip of his coffee, before pulling out a sports magazine from his bag, resolutely flicking through the pages.

Sebastian wasn’t sure but… did Kurt look hurt? He really  _couldn’t_  be sure, he didn’t know how Kurt really looked when having any other expression than… whatever combination of anger and arousal there had been in the bathroom.

“Hey, did I upset you, gay-face?” he asked, slinging his arm around Kurt’s shoulders. His words might have sounded cruel and callous to anyone listening in, but there was an extra injection of warmth that hadn’t been there a moment before.

Kurt glared at him and sniffed haughtily. “No,”

Sebastian leaned closer to make up for it. “You don’t actually like rugby, do you?” he asked, pointing to the article Kurt was reading.  
“No. My dad does. He likes basically every sport that includes violence of some kind.” Kurt muttered.

Sebastian was quiet for a bit. “What  _do_  you like to read then?” he asked.

“Vogue,” Kurt replied promptly, then looked horrified.

“Well, why don’t you just cut off the front of these magazines and put them in front of your Vogue magazines, so your dad will think you’re reading sports magazines?”

Kurt hummed, likely appreciating the idea of cutting off the front of the magazines.

“Just until you’re ready to get out of Narnia again,” Sebastian said carefully. Kurt glared at him for a moment, sighed, and relaxed again, deciding not to argue.

They sat together for the next hour, chatting somewhat amicably.

He noticed, however, that Kurt never moved away from his arm, and Sebastian never retracted it either. Everything felt sort of… fragile, right then.

* * *

 

 _"Are you going to be okay?”_ he asked over the phone. _“I could go full on mother hen and bring you soup or whatever you need.”_

“ **No, it’s okay** ,” Maya responded, her voice a little sluggy. “ **It’s just influenza, I just need’ta sleep a bit more.** ”

“ _Alright. I’ll be watching New Moon, and texting you updates on Taylor Lautner’s abs,”_

**“Fuck off, text me about how Alice’s boobs look instead!”**

And then she hung up on him. He grinned quietly. She would be fine.

* * *

 

“Kurt used to have this giant crush on Finn, he sang a really pretty girly song to him when Mr. Hummel and Mrs. Hudson got together!” Brittany told Maya the next week – she’d lived through her influenza and was now sitting with her pink curls styled prettily into a bun, chatting cozily with the cheerleader.

Kurt however, was blushing and squeaking, and it was clear he was still crushing on whoever ‘Finn’ was. Sebastian could feel the heat of his shoulders against his arm.

Maya seemed horrified.

“Why on earth would you have a crush on  _Finn Hudson?_ ” Maya asked with thinly veiled disgust, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes.

“He’s sweet, and kind, and gorgeous and- You wouldn’t exactly understand, you don’t even  _like_  boys.” Kurt bit out, seemingly not really knowing how to explain himself.

“I have no doubt he can be sweet and kind. But Kurt, he’s bullied you!” she said furiously through gritted teeth.

_No **way**  Kurt would have a crush on his bully…_

Kurt looked bowled over. “How did you know-“

_Oh. Apparently, he would._

“I sometimes look on that Jacob Ben Israel guy’s blog. He often captures Sue Sylvester’s rants beautifully, and recently I was just scrolling through his stuff, weeding out the bad posts, when I saw a compilation video of “best dumpster tosses”. I recognized you, and I had to watch. Finn was there in all the clips. Holding your jacket, while that Puckerman guy threw you into the garbage.” Maya explained calmly.

_Dumpster tosses?_

“He doesn’t want to be that person! He’s not – he’s not a  _bully_  okay?” Kurt sputtered, his hands shaking.  
“You may like him a lot, Kurt, but… Fact is that he  _is_  that person! Maybe he doesn’t like throwing you in the dumpster, but he’s done stuff like throwing pee balloons at you and laughing with the rest of his crew. Not to mention, from everything I’ve heard, he’s made quite a few homophobic jokes.” Maya said, practical as always.

Sebastian studied them both for a moment, his arm still slung over the back of Kurt’s chair, and said, “Kurt, I know you probably think that I’m not exactly an authority on  _feelings_  and stuff, but… You deserve better than that.”  
Kurt looked at Sebastian with a fiery gaze, saying, “But what if I  _don’t_ , Sebastian? What if this is the best I’ll ever get? He doesn’t want to be that person, he’s a good person on the inside, and he’s-“

“Bullshit. He may become an amazing person over time. But he’s never going to be into dick, he’ll probably become your stepbrother too, and, even more importantly, you’re never going to be able to erase the memory of being  _soaked – in - piss_ ,” Sebastian interrupted. Kurt clenched his jaw.

“I can’t help that he’s my dad’s new favorite son. That’s not my fault,” He snarled, his face twisted into a grimace of pain and anger. “I never said you could!” Sebastian snapped back, and – holy shit when had their faces gotten that close to each other?  _His eyes are kind of pretty. And big._

The edge of Kurt’s baseball cap hit Sebastian’s forehead.

Kurt jerked his head back and looked away guiltily. Sebastian wanted to laugh – talking about Beyoncé and straight boys he had crushes on was fine, but staring into the eyes of a gay boy was  _too_   _gay_?

Kurt cleared his throat and looked down at his lap as he spoke.

“I think I need to hear it. Directly from him. That he’s straight and never going to be interested in me. I can believe it then. Because so far, it’s always just this endless hope that he’s going to fall for me, that I’ll be his only exception or that he’s secretly gay, or something. That Rachel’s insane for thinking he’d like her. I need to hear it.”

He glanced over at Sebastian, his cheeks flushed. “Besides, you’re right, if things keep going the way they are with dad and Carole, he might become my stepbrother.”

Sebastian sighed. Kurt was brushing off the actual point – that he deserved better than someone who threw pee balloons at him. But whatever. Kurt would recognize his idiocy at  _some_ point, right?

Brittany looked confused at Kurt and asked him something about dolphins.

* * *

 

Thursday afternoon, just after Warbler’s practice had ended, he got a message on Facebook from Kurt.

**Kurt:** _I did it Sebastian. I asked Finn to tell me that he was straight, so I could move on. He looked surprised, but he told me, and he seemed genuinely sorry he couldn’t give me anything back and told me he was straight. Then I went home._

**Kurt**   _: I cried for thirty minutes into my pillow, but I feel strangely okay now. Freer, I suppose. It was like I already had let go of him forever ago but kept cultivating this weird dream._

 **Sebastian**   _: I’m actually a little proud of you, gay-face._

 **Kurt**   _: I’m swooning._

 **Kurt** :  _You have the biggest case of CW hair I have ever seen. Are you sure you’re not a secret male version of Gossip Girl?_

 **Sebastian** : _G_ _ossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite. Who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell. You know you love me. Xoxo, Gossip Girl._

 **Kurt**   _: Be honest with me. Did you Google that, or did you already know?_

 **Sebastian: ‘**   _No matter how far you run, you can never truly escape, everything catches up to you at the end and when it does, it usually kicks your ass.’_

 **Sebastian** :  _And by that, I mean ‘my obsession with Gossip Girl kicked my ass every night when I was thirteen and watched it religiously, every episode on repeat’._

 **Kurt** :  _You have unexpected depth, don’t you, Smythe?_

They texted for hours that night.

* * *

 

 He’d half expected Kurt to show up the next week in the flamboyant clothing he evidently used to wear, as his Facebook page proved.

No, he hadn’t stalked Kurt’s page over the last week, figuring out what the name of Kurt’s MySpace was through the link Kurt had made about it in April 2008 and then spending two hours listening to every song and video Kurt had ever posted in which he was featured. Obviously not.

Except he kind of had. Kurt’s voice was positively  _angelic_. And his outfits were  _wild_.  _So_  much potential for teasing.

Alas, Kurt had not returned to his own Capital G-Gay self; evidently talking to his crush and possible future stepbrother hadn’t stopped Kurt him from  _playing by the rules of someone else’s game._

(That a line was from a song filmed in a garage with the incredibly curious caption:  _“I love you more than being a star, but I still need the world to know I am one. Defying Gravity, redux. Hoping she never finds out I did it on purpose.”_ )

So yeah, it was strange to see Kurt still in his “straight guy costume” when he’d kind of started to feel very affectionate towards the boy singing higher notes than should be  _possible_.

He wondered just how much  _Kurt_  missed being that boy, if Sebastian could miss him without even having met that version of him.

“Aha, I see the Fuck-Up Fairy is visiting! Have you gotten around to letting go of your own innate hatred for your sexuality and come out… again?”

Kurt sneered playfully and asked him “Is your ass jealous of the amount of shit that just came out of your mouth?” in return.  
”What language are you speaking? Cause it sounds like bullshit.” Sebastian fired back rapidly.

Sebastian grinned as Kurt gave him a disdainful look - this Kurt was kind of awesome too.

Within twenty minutes he was debating heavily with Sebastian about the merits of Shakespeare’s  _Romeo and Juliet_.

“It’s one of the greatest love stories ever written, you absolutely moronic meerkat!”

“Juliet was thirteen! They were both freaking  _idiotic children_!”

Kurt snarled at him and started arguing that Juliet’s maturity showed her to be wise beyond her years and talked of the tragic backdrop of the family feud.

“You could even argue that their  _families_  are the ones being immature – they seem to be upholding their feud for the sake of the feud itself.”

“Oh, come off it, Romeo was being stupid and immature. He killed himself because he believed she was dead!”

“Is that not a sign of love? That even the  _thought_ , the  _belief_  of your lover dead, can drive you to the edge to join them?” Kurt’s voice raised in pitch, returning to it’s natural, high tones as he spoke passionately.

“But she  _wasn’t_  dead!” Sebastian reminded him. “Not until after  _he_  killed himself.

Kurt rolled his eyes in response to that, and snarked back the response of - “If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you. You’re wrong. Romeo and Juliet is one of the most epic written love stories ever, and you can’t change that _._ ”

Maya was talking quietly to Brittany about The Fellowship of the Ring, and Sebastian felt warmth curling quietly in his stomach as he sat there with them. He thought of his dad absently telling him he loved him as the snow of a new year fell outside, like it was something so fundamental that Sebastian should have known already. He smiled into his coffee cup.

* * *

 

Thursday morning, Kurt was texting him and pleading him to _‘send a message to that alien species you’re no doubt from and get them to beam me up so I don’t have to endure Glee Club any longer. Rachel is being a drama queen about how she ‘almost lost her voice for good’. She only had tonsillitis, jeez.’_

Sebastian told him to make sure she DID lose her voice for good.

 **Kurt** :  _Tempting, but despite how annoying her presence is, her voice is the only one that can truly compete with mine. I believe she’d say the same of me._

* * *

 

Friday evening, Sebastian was allegedly doing his math homework, but in actuality he was ignoring it completely, in favor of dicking around on the internet and texting Maya. He was sure that would bite him in the ass soon – Dalton wasn’t called an ‘Academy’ for nothing – but it was Friday, and Facebook was more intriguing anyway. Plus, Maya’s complaining about how Vocal Adrenaline’s music was still ringing in her ears even when she’d gone home from school, that was entertaining too.

Somehow, he ended up on MySpace again, to check if anything had happened on Kurt’s MySpace.

He had.

A new album had been created and named:  ** _Apparently Sue Sylvester has cameras in the auditorium_**.

Only one video had been added to it.

The caption to said video said:

 _“Starting now it's gonna be my turn._   _  
Gangway, world, get off of my runway!”_

He clicked play.

Kurt was on a dark stage, red drapes behind him.

 _“All that work and what did it get me?_  
Why did I do it?  
Scrapbooks full of me in the background.”

This was not an angelic ‘Defying Gravity’ kind of song. This was even more defiant, raw, angry. Kurt didn’t even seem to need air as he sang, flinging off his baseball cap and his unzipped hoodie. The t-shirt with a football player on went too, revealing a button-up shirt underneath; Kurt had probably worn it to keep himself somewhat comfortable, hidden underneath all the big, loose clothing.

 With a bitter twist to his lips he put on a scarf, and his words were so  _bitter._

_“Give 'em love and what does it get ya?  
What does it get ya?”_

Sebastian shivered and felt the tears sting his eyes at the sight of the raw energy Kurt was exuding.

He was breathless throughout the entire song, blown away by the way Kurt seemed to be peeling off layers of himself, revealing himself

 _“Thanks a lot, and out with the garbage,”_  reminded him of what Maya had said about Kurt having been thrown into dumpsters.

_“This time for me!”_

Fuck. He felt his mouth go dry at the defiant look on Kurt’s face, free, and wild, slightly manic in its determination. Kurt would leave this town behind, this state behind. And it would happen as soon as possible; this wasn’t his home.

When the video ended at Kurt down on his knees with a final “ _For me!”_  Sebastian instantly fumbled for his phone.

 **Sebastian** :  _Saw the video on MySpace. It was good._

He hovered over the ‘send’ button for a moment, backspaced, then typed:

 **Sebastian** :  _Saw the video on MySpace. Everything’s coming up Kurt!_

**Kurt:** _My dad saw me singing it. I think we’re okay again._

He was tempted to ask if Kurt would put on the masks again, but he wasn’t sure if Kurt would understand what he meant. Instead he just texted:

 **Sebastian** : “ _The crownless again shall be king.” – Lord of the Rings._

* * *

 

The next Wednesday, he and Maya’s car arrived at the Bean at the exact same time – like some kind of badass pair of best friends in a movie about bitchy teenage girls. He almost felt tempted to put on a pair of sunglasses, just so he could look even more badass. His hands flexed on the steering wheel.

Okay, he was trying to distract himself, and it really wasn’t working. He grabbed his bag and climbed out of the car, grabbing something from his bag and handing it to Maya, as he reached her – small, beat up, but well loved – car.

She looked down at the envelope in her hands.  A bright, yellow butterfly made of paper and glued onto a clip-on was holding her hair in place, making her look like a very tall 7-year-old. She looked very innocent suddenly.

“Got it in the mail this morning, I thought I’d die when the Headmaster gave it to me. Will you read it for me?” he asked her. She looked torn, clearly thinking he should be doing it himself.

“Please?” He felt a little shaky.

She smiled grimly. “Don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”

She leaned against the front of her car and ripped it open, pulling out a few papers. Her eyes scanned them quickly.

“Damn boy.” She said loudly, before she looked up at him, and gave him shaky, but reassuring smile. His answering smile was just as shaky, but doubly relieved.

She stepped away from the car, dusted off the back of her jeans with her hands, hooked her arm with his, and said in a light tone.

“Let’s go inside. Brittany texted me, asking if we were still all hanging out after she and Kurt had broken up. I told her we were. She’s so amazing Sebastian, do you hear me? Her eyes are like – they’re the  _ocean_!”

He laughed and let her drag him along.

“Tell me about her,” he asked her, as they stood in line for coffee.

Maya lit up. “We’ve been hugging every time she and Kurt has left, and she’s really soft, but also strong, you know? She looks kind of fragile, but her shoulders are so strong and trained, and she always says something that makes me look at the world in a different way. Sometimes I think what she said was strange or even a little stupid, but then I google it, and it’s like – the principles of quantum physics that she described using a metaphor. Brittany is so smart, and strange, and I could spend forever trying to figure her out, and I’d enjoy it so much,” she babbled. Bless her gay soul, he thought fondly, listening to her, an amused smile on his lips.

They each ordered their own drinks, Kurt and Brittany’s as well, and when they’d finally got their stuff and sat down in their usual seats, Sebastian glanced towards the entrance – and promptly choking on his spit.

Kurt Hummel was stepping out of the driver’s seat of his car, and Kurt Hummel looked like a model fresh off the Parisian runway.

Sebastian vaguely felt like the strains of  _“everything’s coming up Kurt! Everything’s coming up Hummel!”_  should be playing right now. Kurt looked so badass.

He was wearing a black leather jacket, open over a tight white button-up with a black scarf. His legs were encased in a pair of red pants, a satchel over his shoulders, eyes covered by a pair of expensive, black shades, his hair swept to the side. It looked soft.

He strutted in, still holding Brittany’s hand, but the desperate way he used to do it with was gone. He looked confident, alert but also relaxed.

“Maya, is it just me or did Kurt Hummel just come back here looking as gay as a Pride Parade?”

Maya turned her head and gaped. “Whoa! Even his  _walk_  is gay! I want him to teach me how to strut like that, the sass is  _dripping_  off him!”

Sebastian had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from saying that he knew a way to get something  _else_  dripping off Kurt.

But it was true. Kurt’s walk was different now. “I’m better than  _all_  of you” it said. It wasn’t forced. It was something he’d had to suppress, with the way he’d used to lumber around when acting like he wasn’t gay.

Kurt and Brittany reached their table, Kurt pulling off his sunglasses and putting down his bag.

“You’re wearing a butterfly!” Brittany chirped, and sat down next to Maya, touching the yellow monstrosity with awe.

 “Your clothes look  _much_  better this week!” Maya told Kurt cheerfully as he slid into his seat. “I ordered your low-fat mocha and Britt’s hot chocolate.”

“You’re wearing a butterfly!” Brittany chirped, and sat down next to Maya, touching the yellow monstrosity with awe. Maya handed her the cup of chocolate, to which she smiled shyly in thanks.

Kurt laughed, clearly not taking offense to the critique of his clothing choices over the last long while, brushing some invisible lint off his jacket. “My dad told me that he didn’t want me to try to pretend anymore. I mean, I came out to him months ago, I was just being stupid.” Maya smiled softly.

“That’s great.” She told him, pushing his coffee at him. Kurt smiled back at her, and she directed her attention to Brittany again, flicking the girl’s ponytail with a finger. “How’s it going sweetie?”

Brittany grinned. “Still getting used to not kissing Kurt, his lips were very soft, but being his ex-girlfriend is almost as good as being his girlfriend. He just doesn’t want to kiss me anymore.” She cocked her thoughtfully. “ _And_  I got my perfect record. So, it’s pretty cool.”

Brittany started chatting with Maya, leaving Kurt and Sebastian to talk to each other, if they didn’t want to sit in silence.

“What did I tell you?” Sebastian said with a self-satisfied smirk.

Kurt flushed slightly, and muttered, “don’t know what you’re talking about,”

Sebastian raised his coffee cup in a toast. “The Fuck-Up fairy is now demoted to only the name of ‘fairy’. Welcome back to the gays, Kurt.”

“Oh, that reminds me, Kurt!” Brittany chirped, breaking out of conversation with Maya, and started rummaging in her bag, which was covered in unicorn badges. “When you showed up at my house to tell me we couldn’t make out anymore, which I’d kind of understood already, you said you were back to being a card-carrying homosexual, but you don’t have a card, so I thought I’d make you one!” She pulled out her purse, and then, from this, extracted a small, laminated business-card in rainbow colors. In large letters, it said “PROFESSIONAL HOMOSEXUAL: KURT HUMMEL”. She handed it to Kurt. Sebastian leaned over to read over his shoulder.

Below were details such as his date of birth, his height, and his phone number (followed by a ‘ _call for a gay time!’)_

None of them could help laughing a bit, Brittany joining in with a confused face, and Maya said, “Can you make one for me too?”

Brittany’s face lit up in joy, and she eagerly started to make plans for how Maya’s card should look .

“Maybe something about sweet lady kisses!” she said with a happy smile. Maya looked at her adoringly.

Kurt was staring down at the card with a soppy grin on his face. “You okay?” Sebastian checked. “Your brain seems to have been infested with Brittany’s air-headed-ness, you look positively dopey.”

“Sounds like you think I’m normally quite intelligent, meerkat!” Sebastian snorted with disdain, as Kurt looked at him with a classic, sweet “fuck you” smile. Kurt Hummel had the trademark on those fucking smiles.

“You came out to your dad after having convinced the football team to dance Single Ladies on the pitch, then when you felt distant from your dad you crawled back into the closet, kissed a girl, wore flannel and pretended that that made you straight. You’re not intelligent, princess.”

Kurt just ignored his insult. Even though he wasn’t actually smiling, he was almost  _glowing_  with happiness. “If I had to kiss a girl, I’m really glad it was Brittany. No other girl would have made me a gay business card.”

* * *

 

 “I sold my blue and black sweater on e-bay this weekend, too many bad memories of botching that Defying Gravity Diva Off against Rachel, so I have some extra cash now, and I want to splurge on those vegan cookies on the counter,” Kurt announced the following Wednesday.

“ _Rachel’s_  a vegan Kurt,” Brittany told him, her voice very serious. Kurt’s face fell. “Oh god I forgot that.” He grimaced. “They’re so  _good_  though.”

Maya was laughing into her arms on the table over Kurt’s disdain for Rachel Barbra Berry.

Sebastian sighed. “I want blueberry muffins, so if you’re going to buy something you better come with me, Cheerio boy.”

Kurt huffed and got up, muttering, “Coach is just using me for my voice and my high kicks.”

As they started walking towards the counter, he adjusted his red scarf and brought out his wallet from his pocket. Sebastian had a strange urge to say, ‘it’s on me’ – but stopped himself. Kurt could pay just fine.

He instead chose to focus on Kurt’s scarf.

“Speak of the devil and he doth appear—wearing his trademark scarf.” Sebastian quoted. Straight from Gossip Girl. Kurt’s eyes gleamed with joy at it.

“You know Sebastian, I’ve been thrown into you for over a year by now, and it wasn’t until recently I found out that you call yourself Sebastian, rather than the name I’ve known you by for years.”

“Oh, and what’s that?”

“Trash.”

Kurt had a damn dark humor.  _Damn._

“You’ve been getting personal with me for over a year now, and you didn’t even know my name? I’d say you were a bit of a slut Kurt Hummel,” he flirted sultrily, and Kurt laughed, then held up a finger to stop Sebastian from speaking as he ordered the pastries. As the girl started getting them, he said,

“Today in English class Mrs. Peters asked us to remember to always try to understand people before we criticize or judge them. I’m way ahead of her there. Before I criticize a man, I like to walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when I do criticize him, I'm a mile away and I have his shoes.”

Sebastian laughed, nudged Kurt’s shoulder with a grin, and Kurt smiled back at him.

 “You two faggots are probably doing each other up the ass constantly, aren’t you?” a muffled, male voice asked from behind them. They both stiffened, clearly both recognizing the type of guy who was talking.

They turned, in unison, and behind them stood some weedy little douchebag kid, munching on a cruller, the crumbs flying, and his clothes as horribly mismatched as Kurt’s in his playing-straight days. Except this kid looked  _comfortable_  in it.

Sebastian felt himself  _snap_ , and he bit out _,_  “Oh, I’m sorry, captain crunch, are we ruining your recess?”

Kurt looked at the douchebag kid with a lofty, stuck-up expression on his face, and told him, “I would ask you to repeat what you said, but ironically I couldn’t hear you around the giant dick shaped object in your mouth.”

“Shouldn’t you be crying over a deep fryer somewhere?” Sebastian continued, volleying insults at the kid back and forth with Kurt.

“Are you sure your mommy knows you’re missing?” Kurt asked the boy, his face full of fake concern.

The kid looked horrified. Good. Little shit deserved it.

“See, here’s the thing, Bargain Basement. You can either stay here and keep staring at us -“ Sebastian told him

“- or you could slink away and save your breath, so you can blow up your girlfriend later.”

Wow. That was like an  _atomic bomb_  of snark. Sebastian felt his mouth drop open and he stared at Kurt, impressed.

“Okay that one was good,” he admitted.

“Thank you,” Kurt replied cheerfully, still staring down the douchebag, who was slowly backing away.

Sebastian didn’t look away from Kurt. He couldn’t. Huh. He wondered how Kurt’s lip tasted after he’d just destroyed someone verbally.

“It’s my duty to eviscerate the foolish masses who probably doesn’t even know that men can come untouched, by, as he so elegantly phrased it – getting it up the ass.” Kurt said angelically to Sebastian, as he turned and started considering whether he should buy blueberry or raspberry muffins.

“You didn’t tell him about that though.” Sebastian said, confused.

“As if I’m going to provide some loser with mind-blowing orgasms. I think not.” Kurt looked flustered, but he got through the sentence without stammering. Perhaps his virgin-esque look didn’t mean he was  _entirely_  innocent. Kurt turned and grabbed their purchases from the cashier.

Sebastian laughed at Kurt’s comment, and, as they walked, threw some sub-par insult at Kurt, who grinned back at him, and sweetly told him,

 “Your skin looks as greasy as the motor I fixed yesterday, you might want to clear out that oil. Or is it just your pathetic excuse for a brain seeping through your pores from all the stupid shit you say?”

 “I’ve got a sequined shirt I got as a gag gift from Maya. I think that monstrosity is right up your alley. But on the other hand, your clothes are already so bedazzled, I’m surprised your skin doesn’t sparkle in the sunlight yet.”

They had reached the table, and Kurt put the cookies down.

“Oh  _god_  Sebastian, do you  _still_  flirt like this? All pulling pigtails-like?” Maya complained loudly, as she grabbed her muffin out of Sebastian’s hands.

Sebastian flushed. So did Kurt.

“Really Maya? That’s just- that’s ridiculous!” Sebastian floundered.

“Oh, is it, now? You just compared him to Edward Cullen. I know what Edward Cullen means to you.”

Sebastian couldn’t really say anything to that.

Kurt was smiling. And blushing.

“I, uh, I need to go to the bathroom.” He stammered, and practically fell out of his seat in his haste to get there.

“Did he seem weird to you?” Sebastian asked his two friends. Maya looked concerned, her brown eyes wide and lips parted in confusion, and Brittany remarkably calm, a distant, airy look on her face. That wasn’t new though, really.

“You should go after him and check that he didn’t get sick off the Rachel-cookies. He could need mouth-to-mouth,” The blonde girl suggested.

And, okay, while what Brittany was saying was gibberish – Kurt hadn’t even  _eaten_  any of the cookies yet, what the fuck - it provided him with an excuse to go after Kurt.

“Yes! I’ll, uh, check whether he got sick off the cookies!” He said, and fell out of his seat as he hurried to the men’s toilets.

* * *

 

Kurt was standing by the sink, washing his hands, staring down at the sink, then up at the mirror, then down at the sink, all the while muttering to himself. Sebastian stepped closer, and the next time Kurt looked up, their eyes met in the mirror, the blue-green-gray endlessness meeting Sebastian’s own green.

Kurt looked surprised for a moment when he saw him, but when their eyes connected, some kind of… understanding fell into place between them.

Sebastian couldn’t have said what it was if he tried; putting it into words felt impossible.

Last time they’d been here together, Sebastian had been the one to push and prod at Kurt.

This time, there was something unsaid on his part, something hovering in the air. He just hoped he wasn’t wrong about Kurt feeling it too.

“Don’t you dare push me up against the wall again,” Kurt told him in warning, as he daintily shook water off his hands. “I’m not subjecting my  _real_  clothes to whatever unmentionable things has been allowed to grow on these walls.” He sniffed haughtily.  
Sebastian grinned. “What would you do if I did do that?” he asked, looking at Kurt’s face in the mirror. The clinical lights of the room still didn’t make him look any less handsome, his eyes glittering at him.

“You wouldn’t.” Kurt stated confidently, grabbing a paper towel to turn off the running water without touching the tap, and starting to dry his hands off meticulously.

“Oh, and why wouldn’t I?” Sebastian asked mischievously. Kurt smiled beatifically, throwing away the towel, and then – then he was pushing Sebastian against the very wall Sebastian had pressed Kurt against all those weeks ago. His body felt heated against Sebastian, and his breath smelled like mocha.

“Because I’d get you there first.”

And then Kurt kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him. And Sebastian kissed him back, and kissed him, and kissed him.

When they finally broke apart, they were both panting, and breathing shallowly.

“So… where do we go from here?” Kurt asked, once he’d got his breathing under control. Sebastian could find a myriad of answers in his head, but none seemed quite right.  _Go into a bathroom stall and get off_  didn’t sound like something he wanted to do with Kurt now.  _Drag you back to my house and have sex_  didn’t sound right either. He felt a little frantic at the thought that that was the first two things he thought of. He was only a _sophomore in high school_ , and yet he had been having regular sex for so long that his thoughts automatically went to doing that, even when it didn’t sound like the right choice to make.

“I don’t know.” Sebastian admitted quietly, and blindly grasped for Kurt’s hand, threading their fingers together.

“You’re really quite lost, aren’t you?” Kurt asked, his gaze piercing through him, and Sebastian nodded. “So am I. I think you know that. But… We don’t have to be. We can wander instead.” Kurt squeezed his hand, and kissed him again, chastely.

Sebastian grinned. “I also definitely don’t have any STD’s, by the way. Completely clean.”  
Kurt burst out laughing. “That’s a hint, isn’t it?” and Sebastian just continued to grin at him. “No. Just wanted to let you know.”

“We’re going out on a date this weekend. Let’s figure out how good we are together.” Kurt told him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Sebastian smiled. It sounded right. And Kurt had felt it too. Maybe gold doesn’t always glitter, but this moment felt pretty damn golden.

**Author's Note:**

> It's possible that I might have a short spin-off chapter that I want to write, namely the conversation between Kurt and Finn. If I do, it will only be published in this work, as the Kurtbastian First Kisses fic deals only in the kisses.


End file.
